JANAE ALTHOUSE, top row, left, Gene Goetting and Brian Orwig and bottom row, left, Nick Weinrich, Roger Zey and Matt Cotten made up the cotton team that came to the Mid-South Farm & Gin Show from John Deere's Des Moines, Iowa, Works.

PITONYAK MACHINERY was represented at the show by, from left, Dustin Pitonyak, Eddie Pitonyak, and Gary Coco, all of Carlisle, Ark., who were giving visitors a look at their extensive line of equipment.

ARKANSAS VISITORS representing three generations were welcomed at the AgriDry exhibit by Kevin Foster, second from left, Edon, Ohio. From left are Dusty Carlson, Foxfire Farms; Mike Carlson, Mike Carlson Farms; and William Carlson, Foxfire Farms, all of Marion.

BRODY SEARCY, left, and Rachael McKnight, front row, and Tyler Gaskin, second from left, back row, Tori Cartillar and Jessica Kennedy helped out at the Syngenta Crop Protection Booth on Friday at this year’s Mid-South Farm and Gin Show. The five are members of the Wynne (Arkansas) High School Future Farmers of America chapter who were invited to participate in the Gin Show with Syngenta representatives. They were accompanied by Chapter Advisers Larry Jones, left, and Anthony Sanders, right. Frank Jones, second from right, who works for Syngenta in Wynne, helped organize the activity for the FFA Chapters in Wynne and in Earle, Ark.

LACORDIA WILLIAMS, second from left, Kennadea Panye and Kolbi Moore, all Future Farmers of America students from Earle High School in Earle, Ark., worked at the Syngenta exhibit on Saturday. Their visit was arranged by Syngenta’s Sam Booker, left, and Donald Williams, the Earle High School FFA adviser. Besides helping out in the Syngenta booth, the students also were able to tour the Mid-South Farm and Gin Show.

CURT LEAKE, right, accepts a plaque honoring his father, the late Sam Otis Leake, Jr., Newellton, La., producer/ginner and long-time cotton industry leader, with a memorial scholarship by the Southern Cotton Ginners Association. With him are his wife, Traci, and Kenneth Hood, chairman of the SCGA Foundation, who made the presentation at the group's annual Honors Banquet.

SCGA Safety Award Winners 2011

SCGA Safety Award Winners 2011

ROCKY QUALLS, from left, and Cheryl Luther, Black Oak Gin Co. Inc., Black Oak, Ark., were presented the Most Improved award for Arkansas; and John Swayze, Midway Gin of Yazoo County, Benton, Miss., received the Most Improved award for the entire Southern Cotton Ginners Association.

When the first Mid-South Farm and Gin Show was held 60 years ago, few probably gave much thought to the future of the event — that it would survive into another century and grow to nearly 500 exhibits, featuring equipment, technology, and services that couldn’t have been dreamed of then.

Yet, 60 years later, the show thrives, drawing thousands of the Mid-South’s top farmers and their families to Memphis each year to see the latest and greatest that agribusiness has to offer, to have an opportunity to get up-to-the-minute information on market outlooks and industry happenings.

From a cotton/ginning-oriented show, it has now evolved to encompass all major crops grown in the region, adjusting yearly to the changes in production that farmers have been free to make following the removal of allotments and quotas.

All that aside, the show remains much like a big family reunion — an opportunity for those in the fraternity that is agriculture to get together, share experiences, learn, and have a good time, as this gallery of photographs clearly illustrate.

—Photographs by Hembree Brandon, Elton Robinson and Forrest Laws of Delta Farm Press. Production of gallery by Slate Canon of Delta Farm Press.